The Elizabeth Blackwell Institute for Health Research is delighted to welcome Dame Parveen in Bristol as our Elizabeth Blackwell Annual Lecture 2018 speaker. We are looking forward to hearing her story: a journey from the foothills of Lahore through China and India, her solitary (as one of very few women) educational experience to the top of the medical profession. Dame Parveen will reflect on how her personal experiences and turbulent events of the 20th century informed her choices and how the challenges of healthcare around the world changed in that time.